Cuomo says he had no input into his top CNY contributor getting state contracts

Updated May 25, 2016 at 5:43 PM;Posted May 25, 2016 at 2:16 PM

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New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo greets the crowd at the New York State Fairgrounds Wednesday afternoon, May 25, 2016. Michael Greenlar | mgreenlar@syracuse.com
(Michael Greenlar | mgreenlar@syracuse.com)

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday he had no input into SUNY Polytechnic Institute awarding $100 million in contracts to his top campaign contributor in Central New York, COR Development.

He said the more than $325,000 in campaign contributions that COR Development, its executives and COR subsidiaries gave to him had no influence in the awarding of contracts to COR.

Bharara, the prosecutor who has already won convictions against former Senate leader Dean Skelos and Assembly leader Sheldon Silver, has issued subpoenas for records related to the Buffalo Billion projects, state contracts with COR Development for Central New York projects, and for a controversial energy project in Orange County, among other things.

Cuomo said the federal investigation is focusing on whether two people committed wrongdoing, his former deputy secretary Joseph Percoco, and lobbyist Todd Howe.

"The way it worked...the state didn't do any of the contracts," Cuomo said when asked about the COR contracts and donations. "It's all done through SUNY, the state university system. They are the ones that actually managed the contracting process."

"They are the ones who ran the contracts, ran the competitions, made the selections," he said. "I had absolutely nothing to do with that."

"It was done by SUNY," the governor said.

Cuomo denies COR InvolvementGov. Andrew Cuomo says he had no involvement in the awarding of more than $100 million in state contracts to COR Development, a Fayetteville company that is Cuomo's biggest campaign contributor from Central New York.

SUNY Polytechnic Institute is run by Alain Kaloyeros, the highest paid state employee at $1.1 million in 2015. A board of directors that ran a nonprofit subsidiary set up by SUNY Poly requested proposals to build a nanotechnology building in the Syracuse area.

COR Development was the only company to submit a bid. The SUNY Poly subsidiary awarded COR a $15 million contract to build the Central New York Hub for Emerging Nano Industries, commonly called the film hub, in DeWitt.

Cuomo then awarded Central New York a $500 million award as part of the Upstate Revitalization Initiative contest between seven Upstate regions.

From that award, Cuomo directed that $90 million be used to pay for another contract to COR, to build a factory for Soraa, an LED lighting manufacturer, adjacent to the film hub.

Through his annual awards to regional economic development councils, Cuomo has also approved state grants of about $4 million to COR to demolish the former Kennedy Square housing project in Syracuse and about $4 million to COR to redevelop the former Mercy Hospital site in Watertown.

Howe, the lobbyist under investigation, was a lobbyist for both COR Development and for SUNY Polytechnic. He also is a longtime Cuomo family acquaintance who worked as an aide for Cuomo's father, the late Gov. Mario Cuomo, for 10 years and for Andrew Cuomo as a deputy chief of staff when Cuomo ran the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Cuomo answered two questions from a reporter about COR Development Wednesday while at the New York State Fair, his first comments about the Fayetteville company since Bharara subpoenaed the records.

"I come from a tradition, started by my father, of 100 percent integrity in public service," Cuomo said.

"If there's any violation, I will be the first...I literally have put people in jail. No one is stricter than I am," he said.

Bharara's office also subpoenaed the governor's office for records about several other Syracuse area firms, including Hueber-Breuer Construction Co., Pyramid Network Services, and developer Robert Doucette's 20-year-old Center Armory project.

Cuomo has appointed his own investigator, Bart Schwartz, to review every contract issued in connection with the projects.